


seven years

by Smudge



Category: Riverdale (TV 2017)
Genre: Angst, Angst with a HEA, F/M, Hurt/Comfort, Reconciliation, and unicorns, archie tries but jug is like no, betty get yourself into therapy 2021, canon divergent from 5x04, i vote for redemption, jughead jones's riverdale resentment tour
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2021-02-17
Updated: 2021-02-17
Packaged: 2021-03-12 03:40:28
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,174
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29503542
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Smudge/pseuds/Smudge
Summary: He could feel her eyes on him. With a sigh, he stood, shouldering his bag, and walked past her with determination.“Jug—”His tone is on the edge of curt. “Not now.”There was a missing girl, he reminded himself. He was helping Tabitha. He was helping himself and he didn’t need Betty anymore. He lived without her for seven years, he could live without her for seven more. There was another book in him, he knew it. Putting himself in Betty Cooper’s orbit would bring him nothing but pain.“Polly’s missing.”And just like that, at the devastation in her voice, he remembered the way a pretty blonde girl with big green eyes told him her sister was missing ten years before.
Relationships: Betty Cooper/Jughead Jones
Comments: 22
Kudos: 142





	seven years

**Author's Note:**

> Hi. This is not what I expected to write. I wanted to write a fight drabble. This is what came out instead over the last week or so. 
> 
> I wanted to get this out before the show comes along and destroys everything we're thinking, ha. 
> 
> I think we can all use a little grace and forgiveness and I wanted that for Betty now that we know more about her situation and what they've been up to for 7 years. 
> 
> Any allusion to a B/A relationship is in the past tense. It's not shown, it's mentioned in passing by Jughead a couple times. I want to keep out of their tags so I'm telling you here. 
> 
> Read on, lovelies!💜

She took him in: the glasses were new, but it felt like everything else about him was the same. Except for the space between them. She didn’t think she’d ever get used to that, not completely. 

“I need you to talk to me, Jughead.” 

He scoffed, shaking his head. “The time for talking was seven years ago.” 

“You didn’t want to talk then!” she exclaimed, rubbing a hand across her face before taking a breath and pinning him down with her gaze. “If not now, when?” 

He crossed his arms and looked away from her. He was always looking away from her. 

“Does five minutes past not this year work for you?” 

She started pacing around the living room, which looked just as it did the last time they were in it, struggling with the urge to reach for him. “Jug—” 

“You have everything you need, right?” His voice broke. “You finally got what you wanted.” 

She sighed heavily. “That’s not true, Jug. I lost that a long time ago.” 

“It certainly looks true from where I’m standing.” 

“How would you know? You never even look at me anymore!” 

“So I can what? Watch you with him?” He sniffed and let his eyes flit across her face for a moment before finding a place to stare at somewhere past her shoulder. “No thanks.” 

Wrapping her arms around her waist, she sat on the edge of the coffee table and put her head to her knees. Her hair fell around her face, and she counted to six slowly while breathing in before counting out to four while breathing out. She could see the worn leather of his boots come into her line of sight and hear his keys jingle in his pocket. She could feel the heat of his body and smell the scent of him drifting off his jacket. She could feel _him_ and it was killing her that she couldn’t just reach out and _touch_ him. 

Betty could have sworn she heard him move before he actually did it, kneeling in front of her. When she looked up, he met her eyes for what felt like the first time in seven years, reaching to thumb a stray tear off of her cheek when the front door swung open, Archie striding through it noisily. 

Betty closed her eyes tightly. It felt like a physical blow when he stood back up. She had been seconds away from feeling his skin on hers again. 

“Sorry,” she heard Archie say as Jughead backed away from her. 

“Don’t worry about it,” Jughead muttered, walking past him and out the front door. 

Flinching when the door slammed shut behind him, Betty opened her eyes to stare at her temporary housemate. 

“Are you okay?” he asked, his worry coloring his tone. 

He took a step closer to her but she waved him off. She’d already made that mistake. She made a lot of mistakes where Archie was concerned. 

“I’m fine.” Standing up, she stared at the front door for a moment, remembering all of the times Jughead had walked her through it, all of the times he’d run through it—for her. It was always for her and she felt like she’d made a mockery of what they’d had. 

And now she felt like she couldn’t even remember why. 

“I’m going to bed,” Betty said, brushing by Archie on her way up the stairs. 

Catching her by the shoulder, he spun her around to face him. “You don’t seem fine.” 

With another glance at the front door, she shook her head and smiled sadly. All she wanted to do was crawl out of her clothes and into comfortable pajamas to sleep, hopefully without nightmares this time. 

“Don’t worry about it,” she told him, stepping out of his grasp and trudging up the steps, the weight of her failures slowing her stride. 

* * *

He’d been avoiding her. 

It was all he could do. 

If he didn't, he would end up falling to his knees and begging her to finally tell him why. And it was just so _easy_ not to ask her why. It was so easy not to ask her anything, really. Seven years later and she was still a ghost he couldn't shake. The memory of first times and first loves. First novels and first successes. Everything he’d become was inexplicably linked to her. When he was sixteen and climbing towards her window and the nerves of what he was about to do made him nauseous, he never thought he’d hate her as much as he loved her. 

He didn’t think it was possible. 

He ignored the part of him that whispered traitorously that he’d never hate her. He was good at lying to himself like that. At least they had that in common. 

Pretending he didn’t see her in the teacher’s lounge, pretending he couldn’t hear her ask him a question. He was so good at pretending. 

But then, of course, so was she. 

It felt like a cruel joke, to watch her pretend to be fine with everyone else and know she was lying to them. Almost sick of him, really, to enjoy it the way he did. The way he wrote her on the pages of his novel, the way he exposed her soul with each word and no one but the two of them would ever know the way he traced the curves of their love story with words masqueraded as fiction. 

He watched Archie stand over her, patting her on her shoulder before walking away with Veronica and wondered if it felt the same for her to watch that as it did for him to see her walking away from him with Archie. 

Showing up for Pop just to hear it was a lie. Another one in the Archie column. He didn't know why he’d answered the phone when he called. Maybe he needed the escape. Maybe he knew she’d be there and he’d get to see her. Maybe he hoped she’d come back for the same reason. 

He could feel her eyes on him. With a sigh, he stood, shouldering his bag, and walked past her with determination. 

“Jug—” 

His tone is on the edge of curt. “Not now.” 

There was a missing girl, he reminded himself. He was helping Tabitha. He was helping _himself_ and he didn’t need Betty anymore. He lived without her for seven years, he could live without her for seven more. There was another book in him, he knew it. Putting himself in Betty Cooper’s orbit would bring him nothing but pain. 

“Polly’s missing.” 

And just like that, at the devastation in her voice, he remembered the way a pretty blonde girl with big green eyes told him her sister was missing ten years before. 

* * *

He still wouldn’t talk to her, not unless it was about Polly or the other missing girls. 

She’d already decided she couldn’t tell him about the nightmares. It wasn't impeding the case at hand and she’d worried he’d think d been trying to manipulate him in some way. He didn’t ask how she was and she didn’t offer. 

Betty did ask him, though, hoping the desperation to know him again didn’t bleed through, that the safety she felt, even in the middle of danger when he was around, wasn’t screaming from her pores. 

It was not until she fell asleep from exhaustion on a stakeout, watching for how often trucks passed by, that he learned of her nightmares. Shaking her awake, he ended up cupping her cheeks in his hands, telling her to breathe. Curling her fingers around his hands, she breathed in, counting to six and exhaling to a count of four, her eyes not leaving his until he let go and sat back into the driver’s seat. 

“Are you okay?” he asked in the same soft tone that he’d used in high school when he was worried about her. 

“I’m fine.” It was an easy lie at that point. “It’s nothing.” 

His eyes narrowed, but he gave her a single nod before sitting back to stare through the windshield.

“You should tell Archie about them.” 

“He knows,” she admitted, and she knew it was the wrong thing to say. His shoulders stiffened and he cleared his throat, tapping a finger against the steering wheel. “He—” 

“You don’t need to explain anything to me,” he interrupted. 

She wanted to wrap herself around him and tell him that Archie had heard her screams, she hadn’t told him, she’d been found out, that she’d almost thought Archie was him but he didn’t smell right, he didn’t _feel_ right. 

“Where is Archie, anyway?” Jughead barely glanced her way before he looked in the rearview mirror. “With Veronica?” 

Betty shrugged. “I don’t know.” 

“Aren’t you worried? About what he’s doing with Veronica?” 

If it was meant to be a casual question, she didn't want to know what a pointed one sounded like. 

“I’m not Archie’s keeper,” she told him, keeping her voice level. She wanted him to talk, but she didn’t know how to be ready for it. “We’re not—” 

“You were. You did.” 

She sat back into the seat. Her coat was making her too hot even though it was too cold not to wear it. Resisting the urge to blow into her hands, she rolled her head to the side to stare at the side of his face. 

“You don’t have to hate him, you know.” She closed her eyes to stop herself from blinking back the tears that were forming. “I don’t want you to lose your oldest friendship, Jug.” 

His laugh was harsh in the quiet of the car. “It’s a little late for that.” 

“It doesn’t have to be.” 

“How often did you see Veronica these last seven years?” 

Betty’s face crumpled, her eyes squeezing shut. She wiped at her cheeks with a nod. He’d been ready to meet her eyes in the moonlight when she opened them back up with a single nod as if to say, _“See?”_

His point had been well made. 

* * *

He watched her, after that. There was a skittishness to her, she looked over her shoulder more, she sat with her back to a wall, never leaving herself open. 

Eyes that jumped across any room she entered, the way she’d lock the car before starting it any time she was driving. The way she jumped and held a hand to her chest when someone shook out a trash bag while replacing a full one in the teacher’s lounge. 

He wanted to corner Veronica, ask her if she knew, but if he did, he doubted it would take less than an hour before it got back to Betty. 

And that was if he could get Veronica alone without Archie interrupting them.

He may have answered Archie’s call, but it wasn’t out of some deep sense of friendship to Archie Andrews anymore. He didn’t know if he was supposed to care that whatever Betty and Archie had started had seemingly ended with no fanfare. At least that’s what he told himself, when he closed his eyes and his memory traced the shape of her body and how she let someone else touch it. 

It wasn’t fair, he knew. Or even right. The pedestal he’d put her on had long crashed to the floor and yet he still wanted to worship at the altar nestled between her thighs. 

He wondered if it made him resent her more. 

If anyone understood the appeal of Betty Cooper, should he really have been surprised that it was Archie? Did he see her through her window as she’d grown? Did he see _them_? A small, bitter, and angry part of him hoped he had. 

Hoped he saw the way he stretched her body out across the pretty pastels of her childhood bed and felt the same burning anger that formed in the pit of Jughead’s stomach each time he gave more than a second’s energy to it. 

It took him another week to figure it out, to walk into the old Cooper house and hear her screaming, hear her panicked breathing when he burst through her bedroom door to wake her up and catch her sobbing form in his arms as she threw herself at him. 

A serial killer. 

That’s what her nightmares had been about, she admitted in a tearful rush, she’d been kidnapped and the killer had gotten away. 

He almost laughed at the absurdity of it all. And then he did. He let go of her and laughed so hard he ended up on the floor, his forehead pressed to his knees until he lost his breath, unable to understand how Betty had been missing for two weeks and no one knew. 

Trapped, taunted, and tortured and for what? Because no one was there to stop her from making a mistake? Would she have listened if there were? 

What would he have done if he’d known? 

He felt like he should have known. Why didn’t he know? 

“Why didn’t you tell me?” he choked out, flinching when she reached for him. 

She was shaking, and he regretted pulling away from her. 

“I didn’t think you’d want to know,” she cried, covering her face with her hands. “We hadn’t talked in years—” 

“And you don’t think that there are some things I should still know about you?” He ran a hand through his hair and stared at her, bewildered. “Is there never going to be a time where you trust me with your life?” 

Crying, she shook her head and reached for him again, grabbing at his hand to pull it towards her chest. “What would you have done? If you’d known?” 

Anger coursed through him and he stood, pacing across her bedroom floor. “I don’t know!” 

“What do you want me to say?” 

Jughead stopped and let his eyes land on her. Sometimes, when he took the time to take her in, it always felt like the first time. His shoulders fell, closing his eyes at the worn gray shirt she was wearing, the faded black S feeling like an arrow to the heart. 

“I want to know why! Why am I always the last to know about life altering things that happen to you?!” He fisted his hair and threw his hands out to the side, almost breathless at the idea that she’d have died and he wouldn’t have even known unless someone called to tell him about it. “Is this what you wanted?” 

“I’ve never wanted this,” she said in a small voice, her fists curled into the blanket over her lap. 

He took a step closer to her, but sighed and stepped back. 

“Are you getting help?”

She nodded, her hair falling around her face like a golden halo. 

“Willingly?” 

He thought he saw the corner of her lips twitch up, but she just lifted her shoulder before she looked up at him through her lashes. 

“It’s mandated.” 

A laugh escaped him. “Of course it is. And you’re still doing it here? While you’re in Riverdale?” Immediately, he knew by the way she averted her eyes that she wasn’t. “Betty.” 

“I’m fine—” 

“Clearly not!” he yelled, gesturing around the room. “You’re having nightmares. Nonstop, it seems. You were kidnapped and tortured and you want everyone to believe you’re fine?” 

“I will be—” 

Her phone went off, the screen lighting up with Archie’s name plastered at the top. Jughead scoffed and turned away from her. 

“Let me know when you’re ready to stop pretending,” he cut in, aching to fix it for her but still too angry at her for almost dying and not even bothering to call. “It’s not like my phone number has changed.” 

A low blow, and one he regretted as soon as he was out of the door, but the truth of the sentiment stood. 

* * *

That her mother only made two comments about the bags under her eyes was a good indicator that her concealer was working as advertised. 

She was tired and worried about Polly. How was she only twenty-five and already so tired? She’d dropped her life to go back to Riverdale and for what? To watch the four of them destroy themselves some more? 

And worried they’d be more successful than they were the first time. 

She missed sleeping. The calm serenity of being unconscious for hours at a time, her unwavering belief that everything would look better in the morning. That time would heal all of her wounds. 

It was a lie. There were gaping wounds all across her body, and no one was paying attention. It’d been that way for years. She’d smile and tell them everything was fine. And they’d believe her. 

No one questioned the girl next door. The girl who did everything for everyone and fell apart in the process. 

It was lonely, she thought, sitting in a group of people she used to know better than anyone, being reminded that she didn’t know them at all, not anymore. Watching Veronica laugh and Archie smiling at her the way he always had made Betty ache for what it had felt like to be sixteen and curled next to Jughead into a booth at Pop’s, not at a table stuck between Archie and Kevin, wondering what happened to her life. 

She’d let her thoughts wander, trying not to let her eyes land on Jughead too often, replaying the conversation they’d had in her bedroom over and over. _Let me know when you’re ready to stop pretending,_ he’d said. 

Didn’t he know that she didn’t know how to stop? 

It was not until Archie almost choked on his drink that she looked around and found Jughead’s eyes already on her. His brow furrowed, irritation plain on his face, and he looked ready to crawl out of his skin.

“Come on, Betty,” Kevin ribbed with a laugh, “it’s funny!” 

“What’s funny?” She caught Veronica’s eye and Veronica sent her a pained sort of smile. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.” 

“The song!” Kevin exclaimed with a shake of his head. “The one Veronica sang here before prom, remember?” 

“That’s not funny,” Betty snapped back, sitting her glass hard on the table. “It’s never been funny.” 

“What about it?” Jughead finally piped up, swirling his own drink in his hand, sitting far enough back to almost be at the table behind him.

Betty closed her eyes in the ensuing silence. 

She could hear Archie’s deep inhale next to her and Kevin’s tipsy giggles. 

“I wrote it for Betty,” Archie admitted, his shoulders falling. “Jug—” 

Jughead set his glass on the table with a loud thunk and stood up. “Well, this was fun, but I’d rather be anywhere but here.”

Fangs tried to call his name, but a wave of Jughead’s hand stopped him before he could even start.

“That was riveting,” Kevin said with another giggle, too tipsy to even realize the ramifications of what he’d done. 

Betty grabbed her bag and dug for her keys. “I’ll see you guys later, okay?” 

Ignoring Kevin’s pout, she pushed past him and said a quiet goodnight to Veronica on her way out the door, following the same path Jughead took, wondering if she’d be able to catch up to him. Wondering if he even wanted her to. 

* * *

He’d avoided Archie even more after that. Archie had found him the next day at Pop’s to explain—he hadn’t asked and yet, Archie insisted on telling him—that he’d written the song but that Betty had stopped him before he’d gotten very far into it. 

Jughead didn’t make a sarcastic comment about how that might have been more about Archie’s singing than the content of his lyrics.

“She stopped me to tell me she loved you,” Archie said with the same sort of pained look he always got when he’d known he’d done something stupid. “I—I don’t have a good reason for why I did it, Jughead.” 

Jughead nearly laughed. He’d always had plenty of reasons living in his mind as to why Archie would go after her. The way the sun hit her hair through her window while she was still asleep in bed. The way her eyes lit up when she figured something out. The way she made you feel like you were the center of the universe when you had all of her attention. 

He twisted his lips into a cruel smirk. “Didn’t stop you recently, did it?” 

Archie winced. “We both made mistakes—” 

“Does she know you call her that? A mistake?” Jughead huffed in the sort of amusement that resided somewhere between anger and pain. “You knew, Archie. You knew I loved her and it still wasn’t enough, was it? When it comes to you, I’ve always been your friend until you forget about me.” 

“I’m not trying to justify it,” Archie said, sagging into the vinyl of the booth across from him. “I’m just telling you, I’m the backup here, not you.” 

Jughead’s eyebrows shot up, and he wanted to trust him, he wanted so badly to take him at his word, but he couldn’t. 

“I wish I could believe you.” 

“Me too,” Archie told him before he slipped out of the booth, staring out of the window for a brief moment. “We all made mistakes. Some more than others, but we can’t be what we _did_ , Jughead, we have to try and be who we are.” 

“This is who I am.” Jughead held his hands out over the table, the empty plate of food next to a full cup of black coffee. “This is who I’ve always been.” 

“No.” Archie shook his head and clapped him on the shoulder before sticking his hands in his pockets. “This is who you tell yourself you are. Who do you want to be, Jug?” 

_I don’t know,_ he thought, watching Archie walk across the parking lot. _I don’t know._

* * *

She didn’t know how to be around him, how not to fight with him when he was so angry all the time. Torn between wanting to reach out and wanting to give him what he needed, she simply let herself exist in his space when he allowed it. 

The adrenaline of finding Polly, of solving another mystery did something to him, giving him a new life, a brightness she hadn’t seen in his eyes since they were teenagers. When Jughead pushed Betty up against a wall, his hands in her hair and her fingers pressed into the skin of his back under his shirt, to kiss her, she thought it might have been the most alive she’d felt in years. 

His tongue brushed up against hers when she opened her mouth to him, the scent and taste of him surrounding her in a way that made her dizzy, her knees nearly buckling. She laughed against his mouth and cupped his cheeks, muscle memory still working after all their time apart. 

When he pulled back, he looked torn between terrified and angry. 

“Jughead,” she said, and kept his face in her hands. 

“I—” He pulled back. “Betty.” 

Blinking, she dropped her hands and let him step away from her. “I can’t make you trust me, Jughead. You either want to or you don’t.” 

“It’s not that,” he admitted, rocking back on his heels. “I was always ready to be your consolation prize, ever since we were kids. I thought you’d leave me for Archie. And it _felt_ like you did but—” 

Her face fell. She wiped at her cheeks and he tilted her chin up to face him. 

“—but you just keep picking me, Cooper. I spent so much time waiting for you to leave me, I never paid attention to all the ways you picked me.” 

“But—” 

He pressed a thumb over her lips. “I know what you did. But I also know who you are.” 

“I’m sorry,” she sobbed, and he pulled her into his arms. “I’m so sorry, Jughead.” 

“I know you are,” he soothed, running a hand over her hair. “I know.” 

“We’ll be alright, won’t we?” she asked, her arms wrapped tightly around his waist. 

“It’s what we do best,” he promised and kissed the top of her head. 

* * *

He found himself standing at her door again. 

It felt like he was always standing at her door. 

He hesitated before knocking, and in that second, his phone rang. Pulling his phone out of his pocket, he saw her name across the screen and wondered if this was what he meant every time he wrote about kismet. When he’d dropped her off days ago, he’d promised her that he’d see her soon, that they needed to take the time to think about what they wanted from each other before falling back into old patterns. 

“Hello?” 

_“Hi.”_

Her voice was tentative. Nervous, even.

“Betty.” 

_“You said to call you when I was ready to stop pretending.”_

He inhaled sharply. “And?” 

_“I’m ready.”_

He laughed and breathed out a shaky breath. “Are you?” 

_“Yes. Are you?”_

“For you? Always.”

  
  


**Author's Note:**

> Okay, first, it's my anniversary, so I'd prefer no one yell at me. Pls. 
> 
> Secondly, that was cathartic for me to write. I really didn't realize how much until I couldn't stop going. Is it good? I don't know, that's for y'all to decide. I do hope if you made it this far, you enjoyed the journey. I think they'll be okay. I think we'll be okay! 
> 
> When canon gives you lemons, well, suck on them for a minute then make fic lemonade, right? 
> 
> I am actually looking forward to the rest of the season (i mean, soonish, you know what i mean) and I think when we're back, we're going to be stronger than before. 
> 
> I do hope you'll tell me what you thought, unless you're going to yell, well. I guess I can't stop you. But besos! Because we need them.💜 
> 
> As always, you can [tumble](https://thetaoofbetty.tumblr.com/) with me if you want.


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